218 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



closed the fact that there were but 317 full-blooded natives and 248 

 half-castes gathered together in the various aboriginal reserves, and 

 no " wild blacks " in any part of the colony. 



It is not to be supposed from these startling figures that the 

 colonists had carried on a raid of extermination. As a matter of 

 fact, their relations with the natives for the first year or two were 

 uniformly friendly. There never existed at any time that unreason- 

 ing panic which caused the settlers in Tasmania to believe that 

 they could not safely occupy the country until the blacks had been 

 got rid of. From the first tentative proposals of the Port Phillip 

 Association, the protection of the natives, and provision for their 

 temporal and spiritual wants, had been a prominent item in the 

 programme. The successive British Ministers who were charged 

 with the interests of the Colonies were all men deeply imbued with 

 the humanitarian and philanthropic interest which was so strongly 

 in evidence in Great Britain in the thirties. To some extent it was 

 no doubt due to a legitimate reaction against the callous indifference 

 of previous generations, the national conscience having been awak- 

 ened by the activity of a few enthusiastic reformers. But it was 

 greatly accentuated by the exaltation of feeling which resulted from 

 the stirring appeals made by the advocates of the abolition of slavery 

 throughout the British Dominions, which culminated in the grand 

 success of the Emancipation Act of 1834. 



But however generous the sentiments and liberal the provision 

 for giving effect to them, the experiences of history were not to 

 be reversed, and the wandering savage, to whom persistent labour 

 was an unknown quantity, was doomed to extinction by the progress 

 of that type of humanity with which it was impossible to assimilate 

 him. The causes that ensured this result were manifold. Inter- 

 tribal feuds had always been a factor that prevented any substantial 

 increase in the native population. The universal belief that no man 

 dies a natural death led to the imputation of witchcraft against 

 some neighbouring tribe, and the killing of one or more of these 

 enemies in expiation of the supposed crime. As they got pushed 

 back from the settled districts, the well-defined boundaries of the 

 tribal hunting-grounds ceased to be respected, and this led to renewed 

 fighting amongst themselves. Mr. Thomas, one of the first Pro- 



